Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a door glass-run (hereinafter referred to as a glass-run) which is fitted to the frame of a car door with a quarter window. The shape of the window is not necessarily limited to triangular, but may be trapezoidal as well as quarter.
The following description will be written taking, as an example, a glass-run to be fitted to the frame F of a car front-door D with a quarter-window as shown in FIG. 1, this being similarly applicable to a rear door.
The window opening of the front-door D is divided vertically by a division-bar 1 such that a liftable glass 3 and a quarter-window assembly 5 inclusive of a quarter-window 4 are fitted to the window opening with the division-bar 1 consitituting part of the quarter window assembly 5.
FIG. 2 is a general front view of a conventional glass-run. This glass-run has a glass-gripping groove as shown in FIG. 3 in sectional view, and comprises a roof-side portion 11 which is adapted to hold the respective upper sides of the liftable glass 3 and the quarter-window assembly 5, and a division bar portion 18 which is branched from the roof-side portion 11 and has a glass-slide groove as shown in FIG. 4. The roof-side portion 11 includes a design lip 12 disposed outside the car. After the quarter-window assembly 5 is fitted to the frame F, the division-bar portion 18 is inserted in a notched portion 13 of the roof-side portion 11 and fitted to the division-bar 1. As shown FIG. 5, the sectional shape of this notched portion 13 is such that there remain the design lip 12, a connecting wall 14, and an outside slide-lip 15 connected with the connecting wall 14.
However, since the division-bar portion is simply inserted in the notched portion 13 of the roof-side portion 11, there was a fear of water leaking through some gaps present in such an inserted section when the car equipped with such a glass-run was driven in a heavy rain or washed with pressurized water. Further, such a configuration sometimes caused generation of the sound of wind during high-speed travelling.
In solving the foregoing problems of the prior art, the present inventor came up with the idea that a branch section 9 of the division-bar portion 18 should be molded, and examined such a configuration as shown in FIG. 6. According to this idea, the roof-side portion 11 is cut off at the branch section; the respective ends of three extruded components: a liftable-glass part of, a quarter-window assembly part of the roof-side portion, and a division-bar part, are inserted in a mold; and molding material is forced into a cavity defined in the mold to complete molding.
However, it was found that such a molding procedure resulted in the following problems:
(1) Since the extruded components must be inserted in three directions, the mold becomes complicated in structure, and the work of setting the extruded components is troublesome, thereby degrading productivity.
(2) A connecting line l appears between the thus molded portion and each extruded component (on the side of the design lip portion 12), this being undesirable for the purpose of enhancing appearance and quality.
(3) Since the division-bar portion 18 is joined with the roof-side portion 11 by the molded portion 9, it is difficult to bend the division bar portion 18 in a relief direction when fitting the quarter window assembly and the division bar joined together, thereby lowering the working efficiency of the fitting of the quarter window assembly.